Warren Cole Smith wants to strengthen Christian ministries.

A major way he intends to do that: through investigative journalism. 

Smith, 61, has served since October as president of the independent donor advocate MinistryWatch.com. 

“Our overarching goal is to create transparency and accountability in the Christian ministry world,” the 1980 University of Georgia journalism graduate told me. 

Rusty Leonard, who founded the nonprofit with his wife, Carol, in 1998, serves as board chairman. Leonard reached out to Smith after a donor provided funding for the new position.

Smith’s past experience includes serving as vice president and associate publisher of World, a leading evangelical magazine, and owning a chain of Christian newspapers. He is working on a book titled “Faith-Based Fraud,” which MinistryWatch hopes to publish in August.

His interest in reporting stretches back nearly five decades to the 1970s Watergate scandal uncovered by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. 

“When we’re doing investigative journalism, there are two audiences that I care most about,” Smith said. “What do donors need to know to make them more effective stewards? And how can we serve the victims?

“There’s an old saying that I use a lot in this kind of work: Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims,” he added. “So we want to be an advocate for the victims, which is why we will not only cover financial abuse, but we will also cover sexual abuse as well.” 

See examples of Smith’s recent work here, here and here.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. DNA points to former suspect in 1985 church murders: Here’s a real whodunit with a major break in the 35-year-old case, thanks to digging by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“One night in 1985, a white man walked into an African American church in southeast Georgia and fatally shot a beloved couple,” the AJC’s Joshua Sharpe reports. “For decades, DNA found at the crime scene didn’t match that of any of the suspects who were tested — until now.”

The match: Erik Sparre, a suspect dropped from the investigation in 1986 based on an alibi with which the newspaper’s recent reporting found problems.

2. Donations plunge because of COVID-19, and some churches won’t survive: Washington Post religion writer Michelle Boorstein takes a deep dive into how the coronavirus “is pressing painfully on the soft underbelly of U.S. houses of worship: their finances.”

The blow is hitting small congregations particularly hard, she notes.

But this is more than a story about dollar signs. Boorstein’s focus on real people — such as the Mississippi pastor “who sold cars until the ministry called him 15 years ago” — is what brings this compelling piece alive.

Continue reading “This Woodward-and-Bernstein fan's way to strengthen ministries? Investigate them!” by Bobby Ross, Jr., at Religion Unplugged.